Posted on 09/26/2017 2:20:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
How to square this with the emerging “boycott is happening” narrative from Sunday’s NBC and Fox ratings? It’s possible that a bunch of casual fans who normally don’t watch tuned in last night to see if there’d be a pre-game protest, artificially inflating the ratings. But if that were true, Sunday’s ratings should have been up too.
Imagine if NFL ratings ended up *increasing* this year after Trump attacked the league for being unpatriotic. That’d be the most embarrassing political own-goal since, uh, backing Luther Strange against a red-state populist when Strange was trailing consistently by 10 points in the polls.
Here was POTUS early this morning, previewing the “people are watching to see if there’s a boycott” spin…
Ratings for NFL football are way down except before game starts, when people tune in to see whether or not our country will be disrespected!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017
…and here’s NBC, chirping happily about last night’s solid ratings:
Cowboys-Cardinals got a 9.3 overnight rating for ESPN, easily the highest-rated Monday night game of the year. That came despite some talk that the controversy surrounding players kneeling during the national anthem would depress NFL ratings…
[T]he four Monday Night Football games so far this season have averaged a 7.8 overnight rating, compared to a 6.5 overnight rating for the first four Monday Night Football games last season. And even if you throw out the game that went up against the debate last year, Monday Night Football is up year to date over the 2016 average.
For the weekend as a whole, ESPN and CBS were up, NBC and FOX were down, and on aggregate ratings across the NFL were up about 3 percent from Week Three last year.
Trump’s right about ratings increasing for the pre-game and then declining during the games themselves. Ratings across the three networks were down an average of four percent on Sunday from this time last year but ratings for the pre-game shows were way up. Still, CBS’s 1 p.m. games did well, as did last night’s ESPN game. According to a Rasmussen poll taken last week, before Trump’s “son of a bitch” comments in Alabama, 34 percent of voters said they were less likely to watch the NFL due to the anthem protests. That’s a big pool of would-be defectors. There may be a boycott happening but not one that’s large enough yet to put a dent in Monday Night Football, unless they were offset by a large crowd of rubberneckers who tuned in for the pre-game politics and inexplicably declined to change the channel for three hours afterward.
In all likelihood what we’re seeing is a “soft boycott” where fans are less likely to sit through bad games but will set aside their political annoyance for good ones. If the Cowboys are playing the Cardinals, even an unhappy Trump supporter might grit his teeth and settle in for Dak Prescott versus Larry Fitzgerald. If it’s the Jets versus the Giants? Click. To hell with these unpatriotic millionaire ingrates.
Here’s Hillary last night on MSNBC sticking the knife in Trump, wondering why he’s so comfortable attacking black athletes but not white supremacists. Her criticisms of him are getting harsher; she also wondered in an interview yesterday if he knows that Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Exit question via WaPo reporter Wesley Lowery: Why were the Cowboys booed last night for kneeling before the anthem? Was that standard razzing of the visiting team, or was it a clue that opposition to the protests isn’t about disrespecting the flag after all?
.@HillaryClinton: "Quite telling" that Trump attacks black athletes but never insults white supremacists or Putin https://t.co/5l6tnZpHQs
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 26, 2017
There are times when I simply disregard these polls, and any supposed truth gleaned.
While they may be accurate, I have no way of knowing.
We’ll see how things turn out.
Lets not forget what the 'protest' is about!
BTW: We are already seeing sponsors, players, and other interest groups voice at least some acceptance that the NFL is really screwing up here.
Exactly!
You're a smart cookie; maybe you should think about running your own web site.
What are the numbers for minutes watched ?
They are playing games with the stats...
Jerry Jones did not say he would fire anybody etc,etc.
It was a bit of Facebook hooey.
As is the rest of Salem/Hot Air
The good posters split when they went to
FB moderated comments
I was tempted to . . . the DVR auto recorded the game, along with the repeats
overnight on (n)fl Network.....
But not only DIDNT I WATCH, I deleted all recordings
And then removed any reference to the league in my “Favorites” lineup
Bye bye baybee
Just hang on . . . it won’t last.
The NFL is unwilling to remove the radical left-wing America hatred that it chose to add to its games.
So now the League is trying to dress up this hatred as something else, like “Unity”.
Not buying it.
Boycott. It. All. The games, the shows, the merchandise, the sponsors.
And we demand all tax dollars stop flowing to the NFL. They can build their own stadiums of hate. Or play their games in Tehran and Pyongyang. And no more Dept of Defense sponsorship. That needs to stop yesterday.
yeah...and when President Trump included out of household viewership in his inauguration numbers the nattering nabobs said he lied....my my my...
Thank you for warning all abiut Allah idiot .
A DC cheap labor troll and never trumper and unity party fool who is dead wrong about everything .
Everything he writes means the exact opposite is true .
But its the unity/ never trump party websites the Salem media employee .
Train wreck syndrome.
I guess the Cowboys fooled enough people with their little stunt.
“JJ and the players did not protest the anthem. “
The did. The whole team did. Did you see any with their hands over their hearts?
No. What we saw was the whole team kneeling in support of BLM and then linking arms in unity (to the BLM cause).
I hear you.
Libs made sure to watch. It won’t last.
Last week MNF was between Detroit and New York Giants
Dallas has been in 4 of the top 5 viewed MNF.
I knew that, but many believed it.
Occurred to me the other day that I haven’t watched MNF since ESPN took it over
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